Thursday, August 20, 2015

Charles Dickens, Meet the 21st Century

Letter from the Editor

To: Charles Dickens, Esq.

Dear Chuck,

I got the first two chapters of your new book, and you have
a lot of work to do.

First of all, the name is a real downer. “Bleak House”?
Sounds like the most dismal funeral home imaginable. What kind of word is that,
anyway – bleak. You need something
that grabs the reader, something sexy or catchy. See if you can’t come up with a
better title. Do you really have to use the word “house”? Could be it “castle”
or “palace” instead? “House” is so bland. Or how about “Something Abbey”?

You simply have to stop stringing so many descriptions together in
one interminable sentence and get to the point more quickly! And break those
paragraphs … you can’t expect to hold a reader’s attention past the first page
if it’s just one paragraph and all you’re doing is describing fog! I
know you know lots of words, Chuck, but you don’t have to use every single one of them on the first
page of the book.

You don’t have even one line of dialogue for page after page, and
you need to get the reader involved with your characters right off the bat.
The reader is going to be asleep by the time the first character talks. Oh,
yeah … about that. Is the Lord High Chancellor one of the main characters? It
doesn’t seem like it. You need to introduce at least one of the main characters
right at the beginning of the chapter so the reader knows who this book is about.
Especially since you’ve named the book “Bleak House.” What does that have to do
with fog and the Lord High Chancellor?

I skimmed through the second chapter and see there’s a “Lady
Dedlock” (after an overabundance of description about the weather and some talk
of her house … is this “Bleak House”? Never mind, we’ll get to that later). Is
Lady Dedlock a main character? Maybe you should just cut the first chapter and
shorten the beginning of the second and introduce the Lady Dedlock, but she
needs to talk right away. And she needs to say something pithy. You know what I mean. Something that makes the reader sit up
and take notice. You have to hook them on the first page of the book, Chuck. I’ve
told you that before.

Why don’t you start over and try writing it in the first
person? It helps the reader get into the characters’ heads. You’ve got to forget
the omniscient narrator. There are other ways to write, Chuck. We’ll put this
one on hold until you give us something better.

P.S. Have you figured out what genre
this book is? You know that’s important. Check the lists on Amazon. And watch
your word count. Try to contain yourself and keep it under 100,000 words.
80,000 would be better.

About Me

After growing up in the unique town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, I went to the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati as a vocal performance major. I met and married a tenor and we had three children, and moved to the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania in 1971 where I established a private voice studio and began directing community and high school musical productions. While in Cincinnati I had the good fortune to be on the administrative staff of the Edgecliff Academy of Fine Arts and the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival.

Here in the Poconos, I directed over eighty musicals from 1984-2015, and had the privilege of seeing many of my private voice students become teachers, professional performers, and most of all, find the joy in using their singing voices.

In 2013 I fulfilled a lifelong dream and wrote my first ever book, a novel entitled HOW I GREW UP, My second novel, ELI'S HEART, was published in June, 2014. My third novel, YOU ARE MY SONG, was released in January, 2015. Novel number four, JAMIE'S CHILDREN, was released in July, 2016, and MEMORIES OF JAKE in March, 2017. MAN WITH NO YESTERDAYS is scheduled to be released on Nov. 11, 2017. My first non-fiction book, "MORE FOG, PLEASE" about my 31 years as a director for community and high school musicals, was released on November 11, 2015.